


Echoes

by twitchbell



Category: Star Wars Prequel Trilogy
Genre: AU, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-05-16
Updated: 2010-05-16
Packaged: 2017-10-09 11:43:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,265
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/86924
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/twitchbell/pseuds/twitchbell
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Declared a threat to the Republic, the Jedi are being exterminated. Can one person make a difference? Set in the 'Star Wars' universe some time after Episode 2 and before Episode 4. AU.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Echoes

I wondered whether it would make any difference if the children were to weep, and then realized that all the tears in the world would not be enough to save them.

Fear had such a stranglehold on these people that I could sense its power as a dark entity in its own right. I knew without looking that their expressions held no trace of either mercy or pity: fear had brought them here as executioners, and they would not be turned aside.

Each of their murderous attacks was parried by the Jedi in a swift blur of light, blaster fire ricocheting from his laser sword as he moved with a speed his assailants couldn't hope to match. It was clear to me that he was simply trying to protect himself and the children, and this even though he must have known his defence was ultimately doomed: not even a Jedi could withstand so relentless an onslaught indefinitely. But the people were blind to his restraint. They saw only the destructive results when their own firepower was deflected back at them and, as the toll of injuries grew, so their fear became swollen with anger and hatred. No one held in thrall to such a bloated, ugly thing could be capable of stepping back and seeing the truth for what it was.

But I could see, and my heart was wrung raw. I wanted desperately to intervene and protest the injustice, the inhumanity, of what was being done here, but my head warned me to hold my tongue. I was an outsider with no power to sway these people's hearts and minds, and should I speak out, mine would be a single sane voice set against a shriek of collective madness. How could I imagine that it was possible to stand alone against such darkness and have any hope of victory?

In the end the Jedi's assailants became simply too many. One stray shot shattered his wrist and he dropped the sword, falling to his knees, his face twisted in agonized despair. The three children huddled around him in a tight circle that looked to be both an attempt to shield and to comfort. They were all human, as was their master: two young boys and an older girl. Their hair was still cropped short but the braid that marked their apprentice status had been shorn, perhaps in a futile attempt to hide their identity.

Pale with shock from his wounds, the Jedi looked exhausted. He closed his eyes a second, as if drawing on some deep well of certainty to lend him strength for the final moments of life. The children looked up. Their faces remained tearless, eerily composed even as they read their fate in the eyes of the men and women who circled them. Then, calmly and gently, the Jedi swept down a big hand to close each child's eyes one by one and bow their heads.

He was preparing them for death.

Wrapping his arms tightly around the children, he spoke to them softly. "Remember: there is no death; there is the Force."

His words echoed in my memory, and my anguish was suddenly all the greater. It was an old pain, but one that never went away: those same words had been spoken just before my new-born daughter took her last breath.

I wanted to weep now, but I was afraid to reveal that much of myself. So instead I blinked back my tears and watched as a blaster muzzle was pressed against the back of each small head in turn until the three children were nothing more than a dead huddle of flesh and bone in the Jedi's arms. He never moved, not until a final - merciful - shot left him slumped lifeless over the corpses of the children he had been unable to protect.

Afterwards there was a hushed silence as the people around me absorbed what they'd done, but their fear dissipated only to be replaced by an ugly chorus of self-justification. They had all been Jedi after all, I heard the people mutter; no Jedi was innocent, no matter how young they were, and each would have grown to infect the galaxy like the rest of their dangerous kindred. I listened in silence as these upright citizens convinced themselves that in doing the will of Palpatine they were acting for the ultimate good of the Republic. And I knew then that the dark seeds the Chancellor had planted in so many willing minds had not only taken root but were now grown to full, poisonous maturity.

The forest air blew cool and fresh around me once more as the people began to disperse, but it did nothing to take away the taste of bile that rose in my throat. Right at that moment I wasn't sure whom I hated most – the people who had done this murder, or myself who'd done nothing to prevent it. For several moments I tried to remind myself of the reason why I hadn't acted on my instinct to intervene, and then stopped in disgust: my attempts at self-justification seemed to me no better than the villagers, ringing every bit as ugly and hollow in my mind.

But done was done. With considerable effort I forced myself to focus not on the past but on the immediate future. My ship - and my son - lay only a short distance away and I could be gone from this wretched place in minutes. I didn't give a damn about any lost profit; my cargo would be disposed of elsewhere.

When the news about the Jedi reached us I'd been about to negotiate a deal, but the whole settlement had emptied in the cursed witch-hunt that followed. This was a poor planet, with just one inhabited continent, and only in these isolated mining communities did any of the population earn enough to make it worth my while trading with them. No doubt the Jedi thought such a backwater would be a safe place to hide. He'd been wrong.

Ignoring the people as they began to gather up their wounded and dead, I turned on my heel and strode away from them into the forest itself. The Jedi and the children had slaughtered close to the settlement; I knew that if I kept the sun to the right of me a brisk walk would bring me eventually to the spaceport.

I had only travelled a few hundred metres when I stumbled, quite literally, over the woman and the baby as they crouched in hiding amongst the bushes.

For a moment I did nothing more than stare stupidly at them, and the woman stared back. She was younger than me. Dark-haired and dark-eyed, slender almost to the point of emaciation, I could still see that she had been beautiful once. Even now I saw the echoes of a past life far different to this hunted existence in the graceful way she rose to her feet and in the tilt of her chin as she faced me. For a moment the same look of agonized despair crossed her face as it had the Jedi's, but her eyes were dry as they met and matched mine.

"Kill me, if you must," she said. "But for pity's sake, spare my daughter!"

It was an impassioned plea, maybe one that only a mother could make - although I wondered then if perhaps the Jedi would have done likewise for his small charges had he faced only one person and not a mob. Or maybe she was a Jedi herself and this was a mind trick. But her hands were still, and her face remained composed for all her desperation. Somehow that moved me more.

I shook my head. "There's been enough killing today," I said, with more harshness than I intended. "I'm not minded for any more."

She closed her eyes, asking the question she already knew the answer to. "Then the others -

"The Jedi and the children are dead," I said, more gently now. The baby was still sleeping peacefully in her arms, a thatch of dark hair poking out from under a soft blanket. My son had looked much the same once. "If you want to stay safe, take your child and go."

"I have no place to go," she said numbly. "Not any more." For a moment I thought she'd break down and collapse weeping, but she didn't.

"Then clean yourself up and get out of here. If you get far enough away, no one's going to associate you with the Jedi. Make up some story about how your husband betrayed you and -" I broke off in confusion.

She was laughing. Great, hysterical gulps for air shook her whole frame with some emotion far removed from amusement. Then she caught her breath long enough to gasp at me, "Oh, if you only _knew_ how he betrayed me! And not only me, but everything that made him the man he once was! He betrayed and murdered _both_ of us. We don't exist any more!"

"You can't stay here!" I repeated more forcefully, reaching out one hand to grasp her shoulder and shake a little sense into her. There was scarcely any flesh covering the bone, and I marvelled that she had enough milk to feed the child. "Do you understand me? You'll be caught and killed!"

She swallowed hard. "I have nowhere to go," she repeated. "Do you understand _me_?"

I understood her all right, far better than I wanted to. I'd once been as alone as she was now, desperate enough to fall at the feet of a kind-eyed stranger in a spaceport and beg for help. It was more than a dozen years ago now, but I could still feel the harsh grit under my bleeding knees, the ice-cold wind stinging my ears, and I could remember, too, the ease and tenderness with which I had been lifted and carried to a place of warmth and safety.

"Help me," she said simply. "You're my only hope."

I'd wanted to help the moment I saw her, but I'd thought my help could be passive, that the simple act of letting her go and not alerting any of the people here to her presence would be sufficient. Now I saw that that it wouldn't be enough. If I left her she'd be found and murdered, unless both she and the baby starved or died of exposure first. Had the stranger I'd pleaded with at the spaceport done no more than given me credits and directed me to the nearest filthy hostel, I wouldn't have survived the night.

He'd been a Jedi.

"Come with me," I said at last. "My ship isn't far."

I'd given her a chance to live just when she was on the verge of accepting death. She said nothing, but there was more eloquent gratitude in her expression than in a dozen pretty speeches. I knew well enough that at times you could fight desperately to survive, yet do so without any real belief that it's possible. That kind of resignation to death can actually be a comfort. Conversely, regaining faith that something really _can_ be salvaged from the repeated wreckage of your life hurts like hell. I saw something of that grow in her eyes now as I used my grip on her shoulder to propel her through the forest.

There was need for haste. Now the slaughter was over it wouldn't be long before daily life resumed and the prospective buyer of my goods appeared at the ship to complete our business. I needed either to be gone, or to have the woman and her child safely stowed before that happened.

"You're not from here," she observed, carefully shielding the baby's face from stray brambles as I plunged us hurriedly through a thicket of bushes.

"I'm a trader, and the cargo I carry can as easily be off-loaded some other place than here. We can discuss _where_ exactly when we're safely in hyperspace. Believe me, if I'd known what was happening here, you can be pretty sure I'd never have come to this damned planet in the first place."

"I'm glad you did." She gave me an unreadable sidelong glance. "Maybe even it was _meant_ that you did."

"That sounds like Jedi philosophy to me."

"I've spent too much time around Jedi not to have absorbed certain precepts. It sounds as if you've done likewise."

As interrogations went, it was a gentle one. "I was helped once. By a Jedi."

"So you know the Chancellor's lies for what they are." Her lips twisted. "Such subtle, evil _lies_. And words cannot be killed with weapons. I tried that, and failed. Tell me, how were you helped?"

Caught off guard by her question I found myself not only answering, but also revealing more than I'd intended. "Many years ago I was alone at a hellhole of a spaceport. I went into labour practically at the feet of a Jedi Master and his apprentice. There were hostels where he could have left me, but he chose instead to care for me himself - even though the apprentice kept insisting that their duty was first to their mission. I was so malnourished that my daughter died shortly after birth, and I don't think either my son or I would be alive today without that Jedi's strength and care."

The memories surged back, and I swallowed hard, tasting once more the sweat, the blood, the tears, and hearing again that compassionate voice exhorting me not to stop fighting, not to stop living, feeling the big hands easing the tiny scrap of life from my poor abused body and urging me to look upon my son.

The woman sighed as if she understood both the pain of the loss, and the joy of the new life. "Like you, I gave birth to a son as well as a daughter. I believe my son still lives, but my children were separated at birth the better to ensure their safety." Her eyes flickered to the baby. The woman herself might not be a Jedi, but her expression showed that she clearly believed her children had Force ability. "As you saw, even children are not spared."

"I saw all right. The Jedi with you - he _let_ those people kill him and the children!" Anger I'd been trying to suppress boiled out of me in a hot, angry wave before I could stop it. "I know what unique powers Jedi have, and how they use them to protect and defend, but I also know that they're permitted to kill in self-defence, or in the defence of others. So why didn't he do something to save them?"

"Why didn't _you_?" she countered unexpectedly. "By your own admission you were once helped by a Jedi, and you know the Chancellor's lies for what they are. So why didn't you try to stop what was happening back there?"

"Do you think I haven't asked myself that question? Do you think I didn't _want_ to help?" I demanded of her, my own guilt making me suddenly harsh. "Watching those children die was one of the most …." I took a deep breath and tried to speak more calmly. "Have you ever faced down an angry, frightened mob? They don't listen to reason all that well. And one voice, even if it's backed up by a blaster, isn't going to stop them. So don't get me wrong: I wanted to help all right, but I was afraid. There. Is that enough for you?"

"There's no shame in admitting your fear. Concealing it, denying it exists...." she shivered, "that is where the true danger lies. Fear leads to anger. Anger leads to hate. Hate leads to suffering." She recited it as if it was a litany, yet there was a haunted look in her eyes that made it personal.

We cleared the last of the trees and found ourselves in bright sunlight. The mining community boasted a small spaceport on the outskirts of the settlement, but it was little more than a few landing strips of plascrete battered and worn by the heavy ore carriers that were virtually the only ships to land here. There were no formalities to go through before landing and departing, which suited me fine; not all the cargo I carried had been obtained by strictly legal means.

The ship was just where I'd left her, a battered old freighter that had seen better days and was long overdue for replacement. My son appeared at the head of the landing ramp as we neared, staring with open curiosity at the woman and her baby.

"What's up?" he called.

"Passengers," I told him as we climbed the ramp to join him. I reached out one hand and rumpled his hair affectionately, my thoughts drawn inevitably to those three dead children, and to his dead sister. He was getting too old for such attentions, so he wriggled and pulled a disgusted face at me.

"They pay good?"

He was my son all right, I thought ruefully, always with his eye to the main chance. "I doubt it. Get them strapped in. We have to go right now."

"Sure." He smiled at the woman - my son had a winning smile - and guided her to the spare seat in the cockpit, eyeing the baby with a certain degree of interest.

As I started to run through the take-off procedures, my eyes glimpsed a thin tendril of blue smoke curling on the horizon. I guessed that the villagers were burning the bodies. I had a moment's idle fancy that they did it out of belated respect, drawing on some long-held memory that this was how the Jedi disposed of their dead, but most likely it was from fear that the dead could rise and take revenge for their slaughter. It had been fear, after all, that had driven them to murder in the first place.

Fear leads to anger. Anger leads to hate. Hate leads to suffering. To worlds of suffering...

How long before the Jedi were wiped out altogether and the people forgot them, forgot the gifts they'd given and what they sacrificed for peace and justice? I'd learned something of the role the Jedi played in the Republic from the Jedi Master who'd cared for me. They took no payment. They simply served the people who now reviled and slaughtered them. The Republic would be a bleaker place without them.

"The Jedi have to fight back," I muttered, engaging the thrusters, "or they'll be destroyed."

"My husband thought as you," she said, with a sudden catch in her throat, "and the darkness fed on his fear and took him. The Jedi now know far too well what will happen should they choose wrongly, and they know, too, who will be waiting for them if they make a misplaced step. And he is steeped greater in darkness than they ever could be. Fighting back would only gain a temporary victory at best, an illusion. We cannot turn the enemy's weapons against him and win."

"Then the Jedi will be wiped out completely," I said heavily. "This tide that Palpatine has set in motion won't be stopped, not until it has swamped everything."

"Maybe not everything. Maybe something can be salvaged."

"What?"

I watched as the woman lifted one hand to cradle her baby's head. The child yawned widely, tiny fists balled, eyes scrunched tightly. "The future," she said simply

Then the ship surged and lifted, cresting the treetops as we sought the stars.

 

THE END


End file.
